Well, I came in slightly below average on the midterm, which was fine with me. The overall consensus, based on the comments made by the professors, is that I get the big picture, but I either don't understand or don't express the finer details in my answers. I can tell you very definitively that I just don't know the details. The questions are all "design an experiment to do X" and that's great, except there isn't a nice convenient list of assays that let you do X. And if they didn't talk about it as part of the lecture, I didn't mention it in the answers. I know the information is probably out there in the literature somewhere. But the fact of the matter is, I don't have the time or the patience to comb through dozens or hundreds of papers to look for that one assay that will get me two points on a test.

I suspect that most of us first-years in that class were told similar things. "Yes, that should work, but can you tell me more?"

I'll live. I will most likely score similarly on the final exam, since it was more of the same. I'm happy to walk away from this with a big picture idea. If I need to learn the details, I will in the context of whatever virus I end up working with. But for the purposes of this class, I'm just happy if I pass.

Regardless, for better or worse, I'm done for the semester and very much looking forward to going home for two weeks.

You'd think that only taking two classes wouldn't be so bad. Even with lab work, it seems manageable. And we've had two whole weeks with no lab to get in the way of studying for finals. Yeah, even with all that time, studying for one biochemistry final is way more taxing than anything I've done, school-wise, before. And don't get me started on the take-home final for virology.

I'm coming to realize that I can do about four or five hours of actual studying/learning a day before my brain is done. So really, all that extra time can't be devoted to study because nothing is sinking in past that. Plus, I'm at the point where I really only care to remember just enough to get a decent grade on this test. I'm not even interested in actually learning anything anymore. Definitely need a break from school.

The other day at CrossFit a random guy talked to me, which I thought was weird. But that's not the point. The point is that we were doing the chit-chat thing, and I told him I was a CrossFit transplant from Charlotte, NC. That led to the question of why I moved to New York, and I told him I go to grad school out in the Bronx. Of course that led to the inevitable comment on how impressively far I'm willing to travel to physically torture myself for half an hour. Without thinking that this might sound kind of elitist and insulting, I said that I don't mind it because I just need to periodically get away from all the braniac nerdy people at school. He agreed that coming to CF sort of makes him get all meat-heady. Class started, so the conversation was sort of ended.

It wasn't until I left later on that I wondered if I should try harder at that tactful conversation thing. Yeah, I suck at talking to people. I really suck at talking to moderately attractive people.

But that's not the point, either. The point is that I think I reached my limit of how much info I can absorb about ten days ago, and I wonder if I could have stretched it out longer by making more of a point to work out more or do something that got me physically away from here on occasion. There were several weeks where I didn't go anywhere at all. I may not have been studying on weekends, but I was still here. Before, the working out was more about vanity and a desire to get over my bathing suit phobia. Now, I'm thinking it might be a little more important than mere body image.

It scares me that I'm feeling more than a little burned out by the end of the first semester. I'll be fine after a few weeks at home, but I don't want this to be a regular cycle. In general, I think I handle stress better than some (Basket Case), but that doesn't mean I don't feel it. Even now, I have worries and anxiety. I'm just not all weepy and neurotic about it. Besides, at this point, there's not a hell of a lot I can do. I'm going to either know the material come test time or not. I'm either coming up with the answers for the take-home that the professors are going to want to see, or I'm not. I do want to do well, but at this point, I'm too tired to get overly excited about it. And freaking out won't help at all.

There's been a series of emails going around the listserv about car break-ins on the street near the apartments. Someone wrote to the group saying that after their car was broken into last week, they talked to security, and security promised to increase patrols outside or something, but that the car-owner doesn't think they've done enough. They want to complain to housing about it.

I can't help but think that they have a misconception of what the security guys do. For starters, they aren't even real cops. No weapons at all. And more than that, their job isn't really to prevent stuff from happening. They are there to respond to shit that does happen. That's kinda true for cops as well. The police almost never prevent crimes. They just respond and deal with them. Police presence in a neighborhood for example doesn't really do anything to prevent the crime from happening. It just means that the crime will likely happen somewhere else. (And I'm not criticizing the police. Dad's been a cop for most of my life, and this is something we've talked about and he agrees with.)

Also, I wonder exactly how much the car-owner has been staking out the street that he knows how much or little the security is patrolling outside. He should stop complaining about street parking and pay for a spot in the nice little underground parking garage that you need a card to get in and out of.

Really, it amazes me what people will whine to housing administration about.